Portrait of the week | 28 June 2018

Home

The Commons voted in favour of a new runway at Heathrow by 415 votes to 119. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, who had previously promised to lie in front of the bulldozers, absented himself from the vote, instead meeting the Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan in Kabul. ‘My resignation would have achieved absolutely nothing,’ he said. Greg Hands resigned as trade minister because he opposed the runway. The Scottish government said it still supported the runway even though SNP MPs at Westminster abstained. Spanish-owned Ferrovial, which operates Heathrow, is to move its international headquarters from Britain to Amsterdam because of Brexit. Friends of Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, denied he had threatened to topple the Prime Minister unless defence spending was increased. After a meeting between the two, Theresa May had refused to say that Britain would remain a ‘tier one’ power. Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said during a speech she made at the London School of Economics: ‘It is not macho just to demand more money.’